


Great Pretender

by AddisonAddek



Category: Grey’s Anatomy
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Comfort, Comfort/Angst, Drinking feelings, Drinking to Cope, F/M, Hurt, Intern, Sad Addison Montgomery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:42:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24535600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AddisonAddek/pseuds/AddisonAddek
Summary: “Remember what you did to me when I was an intern?”“How could I forget? You didn't speak to me for almost a year. But you learned.”The aftermath, and how Addison dealt with the painful lesson Dr. Webber taught her about getting too close to her patients by giving her a patient who would eventually die.
Relationships: Addison Montgomery/Derek Shepherd
Comments: 3
Kudos: 3





	Great Pretender

**Author's Note:**

> Pre-show. Pre-Shepherd's failed marriage. When Addison was still a Montgomery and Derek was still her one and only. Basically foetus Addek. Vulnerable Addison since, let's be honest, that's our cup of tea (well, most of our). . . .

**Great Pretender**

* * *

She feels her body scream as she leaves that bar. Pulling away from Derek when he was so overwhelming close like that - warm and safe and the only light in this invading blackness - took every last ounce of her strength and now all she's left with is just enough cognitive ability to understand that she needs to make it to her car. Beyond that, it's anyone's guess.

She wanted the drink. _Wants the drink._ But she just doesn't want to stay - not inside of that stupid bar with all it's damn cheer and optimism. _Positivity_. She's done with optimism and smiles for a while, she thinks.

Her flashy red Audi ends up in drive either by way of her hands or by magic - she doesn't exactly care which because she's just glad she's getting out of there. It's all too intoxicating. If Derek had called out for or even ran after her, which she knows has the highest probability, she wouldn't have known because she just couldn't get herself to turn around and see it for herself.

Indiscriminate shapes begin to blur past the windows, falling into stooped hunches until Addison's pretty sure they're suffocating her, judging by the heavy lead weight on her chest.

_I'm not here to make friends. I'm here to make better surgeons._

Her lungs are chugging desperately for air. Just like how his tiny lungs must have been. She gets it now - why her mentor did this to her. Sometimes - _just sometimes_ \- she gets too overly involved and attached with her patients, she's baffled as to why. She's a Montgomery and caring for someone else entirely, let alone a complete stranger, is beyond her genes' capabilities. _But isn't caring what makes a great doctor?_ The strive. The determination. The ambition. The one hundred percent all-or-nothing. The will to save lives. They are attributes that makes her great at what she does.

She took an oath and she stands by it.

_The health of my patients will be my number one consideration..._

And it is. It always will be. Regardless of what vicious lesson she needs to be taught.

But she had felt his translucent paper-thin-skin go cold in her hands and one can't put that kind of feeling onto someone else, not even her mighty and high mentor.

_You have to learn distance, Dr. Montgomery. You'll be a better doctor for it._

The traffic light is red and she slows to a stop, the stillness affording her a rare moment of clarity. Said clarity being that if she were to take a number of upcoming turns, she'd soon be down by the East River and will be able to floor it enough to take her car over the side and submerging into the cold waters.

She almost takes the next right because it'd be so easy, she thinks, just to leave her foot pressing on the gas pedal, unfastening her seatbelt so she'd hit the windscreen first - hard enough, probably, to slip into that state of semi-consciousness where accepting and embracing the inevitable is the only option. And then a horn sounds, angry and brash, and she looks up to see green, stepping on the gas, only lightly, so the speedometer reads a comfortable thirty-five. Dying now would be cheating. She knows she doesn't get to cheat this.

_Not a chance at all._

She has to suffer. She needs to suffers. She wants to suffer.

Her West Village apartment is silent when she enters it. Overwhelmingly so, like it's intent on making a point of not saying everything she knows in her head to be true. The lights are teasing, twinkling mischievously like it knows what she did, the walls are taunting her with their state of mute. Invisible lips pursed tightly in a defiant act of _'we won't say it, but you know, Addison, what we're thinking'_.

And what they're thinking is nothing but fact that she's a killer.

She killed that baby.

_No, you didn't. He was going to die anyway. He had a restricted atrial septum and virtually no aorta._

Her shoes hit the paintwork hard enough to leave a mark and it's the most pleasure she's felt all day. It'll be a reminder, she figures, if she ever ceases to forget this pain, even just a fraction, even just the tiniest quarter, the mark will bring it back. _Pain_. And she'll get a chance to feel this agony again. She'll remember.

Time passes. _How much?_ She doesn't know. But at some point she's pulled the blanket, that usually hangs over the back of the couch, around herself.

There's a noise somewhere. Either, way off in the distance and she's tuned into it's frequency above everything else, or loud and close by - rising above the silence and the fog she's wading through so that it reaches her ears.

"Addie?" It's the latter, she can confirm.A knock on the door. Of course, it's the latter but she doesn't want to acknowledge it because delivering twins then, watching one of them die consumed everything she had and she's not entirely certain she can make it to the door without collapsing. She doesn't even want to try, anyway.

Vaguely, it registers somewhere in her brain that the door is opening with the set of keys he has - just like she has his - that she had presented him quite some time ago. The last thing Addison wants to do is try and talk it out which she would never prefer because that's not like her. _Not at all._ That's what Derek does. _Talk_. If not her, he'll definitely talk to Mark.

There's a rustling in the space between the door of her apartment and the living room - not a discrete enough area to be deemed a hallway, but not part of the apartment's centre either. He's removing his shoes and lining them up next to hers which is a sad fact she wishes she didn't know, but if there's one thing that will always remain a constant between them, it's his sense of order even when everything else is messy and blurred.

He sets something on the counter but Addison doesn't look up to discern exactly what has made the clank against the granite. Acknowledging him would somehow be giving in, she figures. Nothing makes sense and her thought process has proven that on a series of occasions.

The couch dips as he sinks onto its leather cushions next to her but she makes no effort to shift enough so that he can sit comfortably. At this point, she thinks her limbs might have forgotten how to move.

"It wasn't your fault." he says.

They both - _she_ knows that to be not true because Dr. Webber had put her in charge of him. He was her responsibility. But she doesn't bother to respond.

"Sometimes...it helps to talk about it."

"I'm not you, Derek." Her voice is bitter and laced with something close to venom but she can't help it.

He sighs. "Not talking about it won't get you very far, Addie."

"Well, I don't need to get that far. I just need to get past today."

Derek doesn't say anything to that but she can sense the tightening of his jaw; wishes she couldn't. She hates herself that the armour she's trying to put on is letting any kind of feeling through.

"You wanna talk about it?"

"Not really."

There are echoes of the last time those words were spoken, only this time she isn't pressed up against a wall, halfway to being disrobed and a whole hell of a lot closer to being devoured by him.

 _No_. This time, she's shaking beneath a blanket of flashing images that's wrapped around her, sounds blaring into her eardrums, screaming at her and all she wants is to cover her ears, but she can't - her arms are numb, they're so heavy.

The obnoxiously loud beep of death. Her fingers pressing into the awfully small chest. The sterile air lingering in her nostrils. Shrieks as she tried to get someone to listen to her, that he can't be gone, that he needed another push of epi, that he can't die on her watch because it's her responsibility to keep him alive.

_Dr. Montgomery! Stop! Stop it! He's gone! You need to pronounce now!_

Her mentor's voice was loud in the NICU while everyone else just stared at her.

_11:23pm_

Shaking her head at her cruel mentor, she couldn't get herself to say those numbers and so she just walked, _ran_ , away instead.

 _I_ _work my fucking ass off doing CPR, pumping him full of drugs known to mankind! And now you're tell me it's all for nothing!_

She had promised the mother that she'd keep her babies safe, that they will be just fine. _Safe, perfect and healthy._ A lie. Well, that's also her problem, she lies and makes promises she can't keep.

There's warmth radiating off of Derek but it doesn't seep through, she's still cold. She's always cold.

"Remember that time when Dr. Foster had me in path lab for a week?...Well, we had a case in where we received both legs of some guy. Amputated above the knee because they were ischemic and gangrenous after he developed strep pneumoniae septicaemia. A few days later, we got an arm. Then, 5 fingers. Later, we got a chunk of his nose that was derided after it was finally determined it wasn't viable anymore. Guy was previously healthy, was skiing and just got sick."

Addison wants his words to not reach her ears. _Things like this just happens sometimes._ _It's no one's fault. And it's definitely not ours. It's our job to treat the disease, Addison._ She doesn't want it - this tale of woe she knows is coming in a bid to make her feel better, or just less guilty. She doesn't deserve to. But he keeps talking. Incessant and resilient against the invisible barrier she's erected between them or maybe they've erected it between themselves and she's only building on it now and she's too weak to move away anyway. So his words continue to filter through as he speaks.

"I actually saw the guy in the hospital a couple of weeks later. No legs, one arm without fingers on it, no nose."

She shrugs and her voice is low. "You didn't cause it."

"You didn't either."

"But don’t you get it? I did..."

_If she hadn't fallen asleep and had actually done her job like Dr. Webber had solely instructed her to, then he wouldn't...have died?_

"No. You didn't and you know it."

"Fine." she grunts. She's tired of arguing. "You win. Congratulations." She'd applaud but she doesn't have the energy. "Want to drink?"

"To forget?"

"Not to forget." she spits, suddenly clearer. "I don't ever want to forget."

_Don't want to forget that she's basically a murderer._

Addison isn't sure he replies but at some point, Derek sets a glass in front of her and fills it with amber liquid that he doesn't seem to open a cupboard to find. _Scotch_. His birthday present, she surmises, but thinks nothing else of it.

* * *

They drink and she doesn't forget. They drink some more and everything dulls; the lights, the heaviness of her head on her shoulders, the noise the glass makes every time she deposits it back on the coffee table for him to fill. All of it dulls, except for the images in her head and the baby in her arms and the devastating look on the mother's face when Dr. Stavros told her that one of her boys is no longer. Mrs. McAllister was her patient, it's her duty as her doctor to inform her, but she had refused to face her, couldn't get herself to break the news to her. She had lied. _Shocked_. She just watched while another doctor did her job for her.

 _She's drunk._ She's drunk but she's not drunk enough because she can still rationalise her slurred words and swaying vision into a definition. He's stopped pouring fast enough and so she reaches for the bottle when he seals his palm over her hand.

"I think we should stop."

She ignores him and tightens her hold on the bottle.

"Your head's going to hurt in the morning and-"

"—Good." Some physical pain, she figures, to match the one in her mind. "You stop if you want."

He tries a softer approach. "Don't do this Addison." When she snatches the bottle towards her, no longer impeded by his grasp, it's clear he's failed.

She pours and drinks and pours and drinks and suddenly her eyes are burning with tears but she pushes them away, furious. Derek takes her head in each of his hands, so she'll look at him, only that doesn't work either because she can always _always_ close her eyes when he looks at her like that.

"Addison." His voice is like a caress, soothing and electrifying her all at once, and she can't take it. Knows that if he continues with that tone, she'll break and she doesn't get to break.

 _Never_.

"Don't."

"Addie." he tries again, voice a whisper, and she absolutely knows with every fibre in her that he's finding it hard to swallow. Looking at her like he'll fall if she does, waiting for her eyes to open so he can search them in a bid to eradicate this overwhelming crippling guilt that's gnawing away at her insides.

She can't bare it. And then her body - so devoid of energy since leaving that bar - jumpstarts, pouncing onto him so hard and so fast that they almost topple over the armrest of the couch together.

Her lips are on his - bruising, more than kissing - and biting until she can taste something metallic on her tongue and it's blood. _Oh God, it's blood!_ Derek's blood. And she needs to stop the images from earlier from firing across her closed eyelids.

She all but rips the sweater from her body, tearing at the material until it lands somewhere on the floor. Her breaths are hot - she can already feel them - and she's gasping for air, like if she's too quiet the _flatlining beep_ will filter back through. Derek pulls back with a mix of surprise and concern etched into his face, carved along the corners of his eyes and into his forehead too.

"I'm not sure if -"

She doesn't let him finish that sentence. _No, can't_. Can't let him finish that sentence, and so she cuts him off with her lips so that the words die on his tongue or in his throat and she swallows the resulting mumble.

His shirt makes it to the floor, minus a couple of buttons, and she whips off her own bra, frees her breasts so she can press them up against his chest roughy. Their jeans get removed too - by whose hands - neither are sure. But they're off and she's climbing on top of him, sinking down so he's enveloped in her fast enough that the squeak she emits isn't entirely one of pleasure. Addison thinks she might feel her lips curve into the slightest of grins at that.

_Finally, it's physical pain. She can feel again._

She's rough when she rides him. No pretence of romance, because this isn't that. And when it begins to feel so deliciously good, she nips at his neck, biting and pulling at the skin there, just enough to hear him hiss and reciprocate so the pleasure is contoured by waves of pain.

"Harder." she grits out against his neck as he slams into her from underneath. A new wave of pleasure hits and she forces it away and demands he bite her.

"Harder, please." She digs her nails into his arms and back and anywhere and everywhere - clawing mercilessly - she can find so he'll do the same to her.

There's this noise somewhere - much like earlier, where she can't distinguish its proximity - like a high-pitched siren or the kind of howling an animal makes. Derek stills beneath her then like he's heard it too, but she doesn't want him to stop. Wants him to go harder - hard enough to break something inside of her, she hopes, and yet he doesn't.

She urges him on with her hips and her nails, not with words, but his hands reach to hold her arms down by her sides, gripping too gently as he slides his palms down the length of her heated skin until he's at her wrists and able to sew his fingers in with hers.

"Stop, Addie." he says, breaking through that noise with wide blue eyes.

 _No! She_ thinks, tells him as such in her head.

_No. Come on. Come on. No. Derek!_

But then he does something that stills her too, stooping his head so he can speak so close to her lips that she can actually feel the word. "Stop."

He brings their joined hands to the side of her face, never letting her go as he strokes the space where her crease when she smiles should be with his thumb. "Stop."

Only then does she realise that the howling siren is her. And said realisation is enough to overpower what happened earlier and somehow, breaking through the blackness. And not like a bright light, but like a shard of the darkest grey, just a fraction enough to not be black.

"I killed him, Derek." she chokes in a whisper. "My baby died...He died...and I'm sorry...I'm so so sorry, Derek."

"I know." is all he says, pulling her flush against his chest, letting the tears coat his skin. "I know."

* * *

**Hey guys! Thanks so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed!**


End file.
